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The final chapter in the state's worst mass murder ended quietly in a nearly empty courtroom yesterday, as a judge sentenced Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Mak was convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for the Wah Mee massacre, in which 13 people were robbed, hog-tied and fatally shot execution-style in the once-bustling Chinatown gambling club. A 14th man was wounded, but he survived to identify the three assailants and to name Mak as the ringleader. In the 19 years since his conviction, Mak and lawyers fought execution. A federal judge overturned his death sentence after Mak spent eight years on death row. He has waited out the years since then in prison, watching the case move through state and federal courts.

Yesterday the case that rocked Seattle's tight-knit Chinese community and shocked the Pacific Northwest came to a subdued end. Only one relative of the victims appeared at the sentencing and didn't address the court. No family came to support Mak. And as King County Superior Court Judge Laura Inveen signed the sentence, Mak -- wearing a red jumpsuit and now 41, pale and going gray -- showed no emotion.

Inveen, who ruled last month that Mak cannot be sentenced to death, said she knew relatives of the victims likely didn't agree with her decision. But she added, "I hope the finality will bring some elements of closure to them."

Her decision upset some of the jurors who sentenced Mak to death. They spent weeks listening to gruesome testimony and being sequestered in a downtown hotel.

"(Mak) was the absolute ringleader, and now he gets nothing more than the accomplices? Is that justice? No. The victims get nothing," said juror Eileen VanDecar, who was not at the sentencing.

"Needless to say, it is very discouraging as a juror and part of the general public. He had a very fair trial."

The jury's foreman, Robert Wickard, recalled the difficulty and exhaustion of the trial, and how he had spent many nights alone in his hotel room with a Bible.

"I saw the pictures and listened to the testimony -- it took everything out of me by the end of the day," said Wickard, now 81 and living in Idaho.

The death penalty hadn't been an easy decision, he said, but he's convinced it was the right one.

"I know I sat up most of the night reading my Bible and trying to find answers," he said.

"When you have a man's life in your hands, you've got to know that you're right. You've got to live with that decision the rest of your life -- it's always there."

Mak's accomplices, Benjamin Ng and Tony Ng, who are not related, were sentenced to life in prison. Mak's case has gone through numerous appeals.

In 1991, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer overturned Mak's death sentence, saying his attorneys failed to present evidence on their client's background that could have saved his life.

A year later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate the death sentence, returning the case to King County for a new sentence.

Meanwhile, Mak's attorneys waged a fight to get the FBI to identify two secret informants. The lawyers argued that the informants could confirm that Mak was not the ringleader and didn't deserve the death penalty.

The attorneys finally dropped that fight yesterday.

Last month, Mak's attorneys argued that because the 1983 jurors had not been asked specific questions about the extent of Mak's role in the crime, the death penalty should be tossed.

They said jurors hadn't been asked whether two factors that made the case a capital crime -- killing during a robbery, and killing to conceal the robbers' identities -- applied specifically to Mak and not just his accomplices.

They also weren't asked to decide if Mak was a "major participant" in the murders.

The lawyers based their arguments on a state Supreme Court ruling about aggravated-murder accomplices. Inveen agreed with them.

King County deputy prosecutor Tim Bradshaw said that decision made it impossible to continue prosecution.

"We know this case remains the largest robbery-related mass murder in U.S. history. It set a new standard of cowardice in the state. It involved hog-tying innocent, middle-age, unarmed people and executing them," he said.

"So, given those things, we now know there's closure as the court mentioned. But I don't think one should equate closure with justice."